I think I know where you are going, or at least alluding to so-far, the notion our current situation would somehow have been avoided if only the education levels of the electorate had been higher. If I'm wrong in that assumption, forgive me and enjoy this as merely thought-provoking so as to leaven your next few instalments I look forward to digesting.

The ignorance of the general population is appalling, of that there is no doubt, though perhaps that ignorance is a product of the times, not the locale. I also agree that body holds an educated man as suspect, so that latent suspicion being whipped up into a group hatred of the academic comes easily for the demagogue to use as a tool of unity. It's a very easy tool in the arsenal to use, the object being to unite the masses behind you by convincing them all their troubles are the fault of some other "them" or group of "thems" and getting the masses to identify with you as one who shares that oppression right alongside them.

A leader using social media rather than the speech, pretending not to have any but the most rudimentary handle on the written or spoken word, syntax, punctuation, can be identified with as "one of us" even when his or her background is of a level of privilege about which the masses can only dream. "I am one of you and have been treated shabbily by "them". Join me and we'll get "them" together." History says, however, this is not unique to America.

Every successful demagogue and autocrat throughout history has played that card, "them" not only being the educated, of course, but the educated are an easy mark who often play into the hand, the latest clear example being Hillary's election loss arguably for the oft-repeated-throughout-history and baffling error of educated egoists having never learnt that folks won't join you after you call them idiots. The education that so often stimulates ego in fools has never likewise stimulated common sense where there previously was none. Education is not intelligence, and it is here where I part company with the notion education would somehow have a positive effect on the current state of affairs.

If it were so, I should then be amazed at the inability of the Dems to recover from that most basic of strategic errors, but I'm not. In one stroke, they lost the masses they traditionally held as the common or working man's party to the opposition (who were equally known as the party of big business and privilege) and they still have no idea how to recover them, if they indeed understand they did it to themselves, or even realise that they lost them in the first place.

Still, I'm dangerously close to wandering off into a Club minefield, but there is a point. No amount of education of a fool will keep him from being a fool, any more than the lack of education afforded an intelligent man will keep him ignorant. The educated might have more tools in their toolbox but the intelligent know how to effectively use the tools they have in their toolbox and gain more when they might feel the need.

Since you mention the man in your essay, if I was to compare Trump to Hillary, Biden, and Harris, where I would objectively rank them in their intelligence would disappoint you. Trump has flawlessly outwitted his opposition at every turn with the exception of his election defeat denial and stoking insurrection as a result, yet he was still intelligent enough to turn even what should have been fatal error to his benefit after the opposition bafflingly failed to capitalise on it.

Clinton is the one that made the fatal error that gave away the electorate, a classic educated ego and one who took no lessons from the educated egos that have come before. Biden was just too thick to capitalise on the one error Trump made and recover his party's position with those Clinton so foolishly alienated. Harris was a lamb to slaughter, led to the block by the egos, foolish and stupid, of her party.

I use that example as it is close to your heart and illustrates with some clarity that education does not somehow equate with intelligence any more than intelligence somehow equates with "good". I'm not even convinced an educated man is more likely to side with good, any more or less than an intelligent man. I see no correlation between intelligence, education, morality, and ethic. Any one affects the other three not a whit, in my experience.

I believe it is a mistake to believe education level is a solution to the moral and ethical issues we face. I know many people, the majority in fact, who live in the rural culture surrounding me who do not have the education, but are good honest people who are perfectly capable of identifying right and wrong, who contribute to and are pillars of the community. I knew many I was proud to call my soldiers and my comrades in arms. I also knew a large number of well-educated people in my engineering profession who couldn't think beyond the book solution and other well-educated folk who made the most ego-centric and destructive ladder climbing managers one could imagine. Sure, the rare combination that ticks all the boxes of intelligence, education, morality, and ethic is optimal, but they are rare indeed and arguably only one is a quality over which others have an artificial control. Even then, I'd prefer an education system that teaches how to think, not what to think.

If there are truly dangerous ones, it starts with the educated ego/fool who is proud of the tools in their toolbox but quite unable to use them when their education level automatically elevates them into a position where those tools become necessary. It's the danger that comes with the notion education level is a sole metric of merit, social or professional.

The worst are the intelligent, especially the educated intelligent whose ego has been further affirmed by parchment, who mercilessly use that combination for self-elevation at the expense of all others, for they have the craft to get people to forget their own intelligence, morality, ethic, and (easiest of all it turns out), education.